COVID-19

What feeds our fear in times of crisis, such as this pandemic we are in? How can we avoid letting fear paralyze our search for information and our ability to make the right decisions?

Early reports out of China showed that elderly people and the chronically ill were most vulnerable to Covid-19. Yet an alarming number of young people in the United States have been hospitalized with severe infections. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 40% of American Covid-19 patients who were hospitalized were under 55 – and 20% were between ages 20...

On any given day, a typical person checks the clock several dozen times.

Do we need to wait for the results of longitudinal scientific studies, extending to decades, to know if vaccines are safe?

Why can vaccinated people still get COVID-19 or even die from the disease?

These days we all need to hear good news—that life will soon return to normal and that we will be able to return to the troubles of yesterday, which now seem small to us. In the meantime, our lifestyle has seen changes that we could not have imagined just a few weeks ago.

The mortality rate of COVID-19 remains high, but not as high as its transmission rate, and this good news needs nuances and explanations.

They live in five European countries and could not be more different in age, interest or inclination. However, that made no difference. They were all infected. Some were not scared. Others were terrified. They have all gone through an experience that, without exception, has marked their lives.

While most of us have been staying inside for several weeks, many leave the safety of their homes every day to help us live our lives as normally as possible.

What are the most reliable sources of information on the coronavirus, and what are the arguments that advocate for their reliability?

This coronavirus crisis has, for me, some perplexing parallels with a well-known incident narrated in the Gospel of Matthew (14:22-33). The disciples are confined in a little boat in the middle of a terrible storm, almost as we are confined at home today by the emergency laws of our countries.

Along with the rising death toll due to coronavirus complications, a usually latent aspect of our fear becomes harder to ignore. Despite the fact that it is the only certainty we all share, realising that our own end is a reality we might need to confront sooner than we had thought leaves many of us fervently searching for consolation.

Tueday, 31 March 2020, marked exactly three months since the World Health Organization, the Chinese office, was notified of incidences of pneumonia from an unknown cause. According to specialists from the Robert Koch Institute in Germany, we have not yet reached the peak of the pandemic in Europe. We hear about mild and asymptomatic cases, but also about many deaths globally.

1. I remember that day, 9/11. It was chaos. Violence, shortage of food. For several days, it was uncertain if there would be more...

The Spanish flu filled graves in almost every cemetery in the world. However, surprisingly, this tragedy had largely been forgotten until recently. A century later, the issue returned to the centre of attention, with specialists wondering if they can identify a pattern in the evolution of the COVID-19 health crisis based on the pandemic from a century ago.